She tried. And she succeeded. Naturally. Emilia D'Anzica, founder of Customer Growth Advisors, joined Helping Sells Radio intending to take over the show and interview Bill about his book. We did that at the end of the show, but before we did that, we spent time talking about Emilia and her work with customer success teams. Very early on in the show we talked about on-boarding pitfalls because we all want to avoid them. One of the pitfalls Emilia wants us all to really get is that we assume our customers will just learn how to use our software. And this is not true. Customer needs our help in on-boarding to understand why and how to use our software. But that does not mean turning on the fire hose and try to show the customers everything. Emilia urges us to make sure the on-boarding training is laser focused on the fewest most important task that get customers to perform the one thing they bought our product for...whatever that it. Don't do more that because customers will forget it anyway. Just get them to the one thing first. Then build on that learning later.

Oh, and we also talked about Emilia and the book she wants to write one day. We're going to check in on your Emilie. Write that book!

Michael Redbord, General Manager of the Service Hub at HubSpot, joined Helping Sells Radio to talk about making customers successful. Software companies have to focus on building trust, adding value, and helping people do their job better. But how far should we go in helping our customer be successful? Asked another way, "Should the gym employee come to my house and throw away the cookies?" While Mike doesn't think the gym should go to people's houses slapping cookies out of their hands, we should try to help customers do their jobs better, not just get them to log into our software. Just think about how HubSpot does his. A lot of it is with education: educational blogs, HubSpot Academy, and the book "Inbound!" Speaking of books, Mike thinks the topic of making customers successful more than warrants a book. We agree. Write it, Mike.

Matt Cameron used to hand write letters to prospects to get into their office for a sales call. After granting Matt a meeting, a global company CFO said to Matt, "I need to believe that you know something that I need to know now."

Whoa!

How many SDRs are thinking like that?

Not many.

At least in part, it seems this experience has driven Matt on his mission to help sales people learn executive acumen and become experts in the domain into which they sell, so that they can help prospects create value. Matt is well on his way. He founded SalesOps Central and created the SaaSy Sales Management boot camp to do just that. His background is as a sales leader at Salesforce and Yammer, two sales juggernauts to be sure.

Are you helping your sales teams development executive acumen and domain expertise?

I bet you have heard of the golden rule. You may have even followed it a few times in your life. There is nothing wrong with the golden rule. I think it's great. But if you think about it carefully, the golden rule is inherently selfish..."treat people the way 'we' want to be treated?" Jeanne Bliss has another idea. An idea that is more personal but less selfish. The idea is to treat people the way you would want your mom to be treated. Whoa! Think about that there for a minute. Then, think about it in the context of business. For example, answer this question: "Would you turn your mom's warrantee down 3 days after it expires?" Not! But companies do that to customers every day. And it's a shame.

Jeanne Bliss, 5-time chief customer officer and 4-time author has a new book that I think threatens the golden rule's reign. We will soon all invoke the "Make Mom Proud" rule for how to treat our customers. And that is the name of her new book, "Would You Do That Do You Mother: The 'Make Mom Proud' Standard for How to Treat Your Customers."

Jeanne joins us on Helping Sells Radio to help us apply this new rule on our businesses.